A pair of Maryland dads are suing the District of Columbia Child and Family Services Agency (CFS) for denying them custody of their children after the organization took their offspring from their mothers, according to the Washington Post.

Sam Wilson and Andre Adgerson were hands-on fathers who until recently had joint custody of their children. The mothers of their children were found to have neglected the kids to the extent that they had to be removed from their homes, the news source reported.

When the CFS came to take the children from their mothers, they took the kids to a foster care center instead of placing them in the custody of their fathers.

According to the news provider, this decision came as a result of the CFS’s interpretation of the Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children. This led to the children being placed in foster homes for between one and six months while their fathers were assessed, despite their joint custody that was previously granted.

The District of Columbia and Family Services Agency handled more than 2,140 children who were in out-of-home care for 2009, according to the government website.

The personal information of approximately 4,000 custodial parents were accidentally released by the Division of Child Support in Washington state, a violation of health privacy laws, the Seattle Times reports.

The agency announced that addresses were released, but none of those addresses were those of highly sensitive clients, such as foster families or victims of domestic violence. The individuals whose addresses were released have been contacted.

Addresses were accidentally released at the beginning of July, when a letter was sent to the employers of noncustodial parents to inform them of children who should be placed on the employee’s healthcare insurance plan.

In these letters, it was appropriate to include the addresses of the children and their custodial parents, but copies of these letters were inadvertently sent to the noncustodial parents. According to Adolfo Capestany, a spokesman for the Division of Child Support, an error in the coding of insurance-enrollment forms caused the mishap.

The release of personal information is not just a matter of privacy, but also of security. In some cases, noncustodial parents have been known to kidnap their own children. For example, a child in Tulsa was recently reported missing after his mother, the noncustodial parent, took off with him, KTUL reports. The child was eventually found at a Salvation Army.

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